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Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Scanning the Sky for Dream Destination

Was I born with the travel bug? Maybe. How else can it be explained that motion sickness notwithstanding, I have been travelling ever since I was a kid. The very smell of the train, the bus or the car still makes me feel nauseous. And you must agree that each of them do have one peculiar to them. And I have tried everything from rubbing the dirt from the tyre onto my forehead (the driver insisted), inhaling citrus fruit to having them, ginger, distraction tactics... and the list is endless. Popping those anti vomiting tablets do es help the best but you snore your way through all those beautiful sights of the journey. My dad once told me I was fit for the bullock cart. Sigh! If only we could travel the world in a bovine chauffeured cart, we would get to see so many of those little surprises around each bend. So has this malady deterred me from travelling? Nah! On the contrary it has only intensified. And now I've my kids for company. So we have a family support group that leaves the hubby to do all the lugging around as we lug ourselves with lolling heads.

Back from an international trip last year, we were already itching for the next one- domestic or well! if dreams permits, another sojourn abroad. We were mesmerised by the many quaint villages and the enigmatic cottages on the heights reached by little lanes winding up with flowery meadows for company. Or little inviting homes by the lakes with sail boats moored to the shore. As we passed each of those frames, we promised ourselves 'someday soon'. Just as I did every time I came across those beautiful captures on glossy travel magazines. Actually, this holds good for all the places we have travelled to, be it Kasauli, Chail, Jodhpur, Cochin, Edinburgh, Saputara, Brussels, Shillong or anywhere. Each of these places have enticed us.And each of them have given us somethibng in return. And we have reiterated for an encore only to finalise another destination the next time.

In my free time, which has become a rarity, I was day dreaming of our next vacation. This time I was looking for an offbeat track not very far from home, but as usual could not zero down on any. That's when I came across Skyscanner on Indiblogger sponsoring a contest. Curious about this new entrant I scoured the internet for more information and realised that Skyscanner has been around since 2002. Not exactly a new kid on the block. Then there was the Skyscanner's bloggers' meet in Delhi with a team game of treasure hunt involving the use of their unique tools and app that actually made me understand the fluidity with which one could plan a journey.

Given the present stage of nonexistent conception as far as a destination or time window was concerned, I could play around with it's 'everywhere', 'whole year', whole month' and 'whole week' options to see if I could find something to suit my pocket as well as adjust kids' holidays and hubby's leave. But simply playing around was not the idea. That's when I stumbled upon their Travel Features and News section that carried an article Top Budget Foreign Trips From India. This was an amazing co incidence! Err... was there anyone snooping on me? Maybe they planted a bug or something in the bloggers meet! To you, it may sound far fetched but for me it was a possibility, technology challenged that I am. So I kind of look up at technology with reverential awe short of prostrating myself in it's presence, and the ones fluent with it, as the chosen few.

Scanning their useful article Koh Samui, Malacca,Male and Bali are what caught my attention. It was the price that was going to decide the winning destination. Having travelled around the Alps a bit in our last trip, lounging around beaches was not a bad idea. Reading up on these places swayed my stand on decisive factors. What Bali promised me was a tripartite connection between man, God and environment. This wouldn't be just a trip with the camera capturing the memories of beautiful locales for posterity. It would probably be a journey to help me discover a facet of the self. I hoped to find a strand of me akin to how Julia Roberts found herself in Eat Pray Love. Now I had something concrete to work on. Checking the flight options for Bali, December appeared to be a convenient time to explore Bali. Wait a minute! Could I trust these guys not to be fleecing me with hidden charges? That's when I remembered their promise of honesty in the Indibloggers' meet.While going through their site I found the following claim instead of the usual disclaimer,

If you believe any information on this page is incorrect then please contact Skyscanner.
The transparency in their website laid to rest any apprehensions regarding their motives.

So, did I book ourselves for a vacation to Bali just now? I didn't. Actually, I'll let my hubby do the rest since the groundwork was already done. For our last trip to Germany , I'd seen him sitting wide awake like an owl in the middle of the night scouring the internet for the 'best deals'. Night after night. Week after week. Till I thought why are we even bothering about this trip if the starting point was going to be so painful? We had roped in our relatives at Nuremberg to help join in the search for hotels and flights that wouldn't scorch the pockets. This time it shall be different. All I need to do is gift him the link to Skyscanner and watch him enjoy the joys of planning a vacation. The smart way.

In the meantime, let me plan my luggage and the attires going into it. Not to forget those anti vomiting pills. Bali! Here I come lolling my head. Travel I shall but the relaxed way, the smart way, thanks to Skyscanner!